[Reader-list] Thrill of the chaste - with source!

[Rakesh Iyer]

While thanks for this piece of info, I think one should not forget what
Gandhi and Vivekananda once said, should be the core of our living: Take
what is good from others, and leave aside the bad. We have a lot many issues
I believe, and we can take good from this and also the bad. And accordingly
live our life.

Rakesh

On Thu, Apr 8, 2010 at 1:42 PM, Sanjay Kak <kaksanjay at gmail.com> wrote:

> Apologies: this part got left behind:
>
> In these times of war, just to cheer people up, a blast from the past!
> Best
> Sanjay
>
> ---------------------------
>
>
> http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/thrill-of-the-chaste-the-truth-about-gandhis-sex-life-1937411.html
>
> Thrill of the chaste: The truth about Gandhi's sex life
>
> With religious chastity under scrutiny, a new book throws light on
> Gandhi's practice of sleeping next to naked girls. In fact, he was
> sex-mad, writes biographer Jad Adams
>
> Wednesday, 7 April 2010
>
> It was no secret that Mohandas Gandhi had an unusual sex life. He
> spoke constantly of sex and gave detailed, often provocative,
> instructions to his followers as to how to they might best observe
> chastity. And his views were not always popular; "abnormal and
> unnatural" was how the first Prime Minister of independent India,
> Jawaharlal Nehru, described Gandhi's advice to newlyweds to stay
> celibate for the sake of their souls.
>
> But was there something more complex than a pious plea for chastity at
> play in Gandhi's beliefs, preachings and even his unusual personal
> practices (which included, alongside his famed chastity, sleeping
> naked next to nubile, naked women to test his restraint)? In the
> course of researching my new book on Gandhi, going through a hundred
> volumes of his complete works and many tomes of eye-witness material,
> details became apparent which add up to a more bizarre sexual history.
>
> Much of this material was known during his lifetime, but was distorted
> or suppressed after his death during the process of elevating Gandhi
> into the "Father of the Nation" Was the Mahatma, in fact, as the
> pre-independence prime minister of the Indian state of Travancore
> called him, "a most dangerous, semi-repressed sex maniac"?
>
> Gandhi was born in the Indian state of Gujarat and married at 13 in
> 1883; his wife Kasturba was 14, not early by the standards of Gujarat
> at that time. The young couple had a normal sex life, sharing a bed in
> a separate room in his family home, and Kasturba was soon pregnant.
>
> Two years later, as his father lay dying, Gandhi left his bedside to
> have sex with Kasturba. Meanwhile, his father drew his last breath.
> The young man compounded his grief with guilt that he had not been
> present, and represented his subsequent revulsion towards "lustful
> love" as being related to his father's death.
>
> However, Gandhi and Kasturba's last child wasn't born until fifteen
> years later, in 1900.
>
> In fact, Gandhi did not develop his censorious attitude to sex (and
> certainly not to marital sex) until he was in his 30s, while a
> volunteer in the ambulance corps, assisting the British Empire in its
> wars in Southern Africa. On long marches in sparsely populated land in
> the Boer War and the Zulu uprisings, Gandhi considered how he could
> best "give service" to humanity and decided it must be by embracing
> poverty and chastity.
>
> At the age of 38, in 1906, he took a vow of brahmacharya, which meant
> living a spiritual life but is normally referred to as chastity,
> without which such a life is deemed impossible by Hindus.
>
> Gandhi found it easy to embrace poverty. It was chastity that eluded
> him. So he worked out a series of complex rules which meant he could
> say he was chaste while still engaging in the most explicit sexual
> conversation, letters and behaviour.
>
> With the zeal of the convert, within a year of his vow, he told
> readers of his newspaper Indian Opinion: "It is the duty of every
> thoughtful Indian not to marry. In case he is helpless in regard to
> marriage, he should abstain from sexual intercourse with his wife."
>
> Meanwhile, Gandhi was challenging that abstinence in his own way. He
> set up ashrams in which he began his first "experiments" with sex;
> boys and girls were to bathe and sleep together, chastely, but were
> punished for any sexual talk. Men and women were segregated, and
> Gandhi's advice was that husbands should not be alone with their
> wives, and, when they felt passion, should take a cold bath.
>
> The rules did not, however, apply to him. Sushila Nayar, the
> attractive sister of Gandhi's secretary, also his personal physician,
> attended Gandhi from girlhood. She used to sleep and bathe with
> Gandhi. When challenged, he explained how he ensured decency was not
> offended. "While she is bathing I keep my eyes tightly shut," he said,
> "I do not know ... whether she bathes naked or with her underwear on.
> I can tell from the sound that she uses soap." The provision of such
> personal services to Gandhi was a much sought-after sign of his favour
> and aroused jealousy among the ashram inmates.
>
> As he grew older (and following Kasturba's death) he was to have more
> women around him and would oblige women to sleep with him whom –
> according to his segregated ashram rules – were forbidden to sleep
> with their own husbands. Gandhi would have women in his bed, engaging
> in his "experiments" which seem to have been, from a reading of his
> letters, an exercise in strip-tease or other non-contact sexual
> activity. Much explicit material has been destroyed but tantalising
> remarks in Gandhi's letters remain such as: "Vina's sleeping with me
> might be called an accident. All that can be said is that she slept
> close to me." One might assume, then, that getting into the spirit of
> the Gandhian experiment meant something more than just sleeping close
> to him.
>
> It can't, one imagines, can have helped with the "involuntary
> discharges" which Gandhi complained of experiencing more frequently
> since his return to India. He had an almost magical belief in the
> power of semen: "One who conserves his vital fluid acquires unfailing
> power," he said.
>
> Meanwhile, it seemed that challenging times required greater efforts
> of spiritual fortitude, and for that, more attractive women were
> required: Sushila, who in 1947 was 33, was now due to be supplanted in
> the bed of the 77-year-old Gandhi by a woman almost half her age.
> While in Bengal to see what comfort he could offer in times of
> inter-communal violence in the run-up to independence, Gandhi called
> for his 18-year-old grandniece Manu to join him – and sleep with him.
> "We both may be killed by the Muslims," he told her, "and must put our
> purity to the ultimate test, so that we know that we are offering the
> purest of sacrifices, and we should now both start sleeping naked."
>
> Such behaviour was no part of the accepted practice of bramacharya.
> He, by now, described his reinvented concept of a brahmachari as: "One
> who never has any lustful intention, who, by constant attendance upon
> God, has become proof against conscious or unconscious emissions, who
> is capable of lying naked with naked women, however beautiful, without
> being in any manner whatsoever sexually excited ... who is making
> daily and steady progress towards God and whose every act is done in
> pursuance of that end and no other." That is, he could do whatever he
> wished, so long as there was no apparent "lustful intention". He had
> effectively redefined the concept of chastity to fit his personal
> practices.
>
> Thus far, his reasoning was spiritual, but in the maelstrom that was
> India approaching independence he took it upon himself to see his sex
> experiments as having national importance: "I hold that true service
> of the country demands this observance," he stated.
>
> But while he was becoming bolder in his self-righteousness, Gandhi's
> behaviour was widely discussed and criticised by family members and
> leading politicians. Some members of his staff resigned, including two
> editors of his newspaper who left after refusing to print parts of
> Gandhi's sermons dealing with his sleeping arrangements.
>
> But Gandhi found a way of regarding the objections as a further reason
> tocontinue. "If I don't let Manu sleep with me, though I regard it as
> essential that she should," he announced, "wouldn't that be a sign of
> weakness in me?"
>
> Eighteen-year-old Abha, the wife of Gandhi's grandnephew Kanu Gandhi,
> rejoined Gandhi's entourage in the run-up to independence in 1947 and
> by the end of August he was sleeping with both Manu and Abha at the
> same time.
>
> When he was assassinated in January 1948, it was with Manu and Abha by
> his side. Despite her having been his constant companion in his last
> years, family members, tellingly, removed Manu from the scene. Gandhi
> had written to his son: "I have asked her to write about her sharing
> the bed with me," but the protectors of his image were eager to
> eliminate this element of the great leader's life. Devdas, Gandhi's
> son, accompanied Manu to Delhi station where he took the opportunity
> of instructing her to keep quiet.
>
> Questioned in the 1970s, Sushila revealingly placed the elevation of
> this lifestyle to a brahmacharya experiment was a response to
> criticism of this behaviour. "Later on, when people started asking
> questions about his physical contact with women – with Manu, with
> Abha, with me – the idea of brahmacharya experiments was developed ...
> in the early days, there was no question of calling this a
> brahmacharya experiment." It seems that Gandhi lived as he wished, and
> only when challenged did he turn his own preferences into a cosmic
> system of rewards and benefits. Like many great men, Gandhi made up
> the rules as he went along.
>
> While it was commonly discussed as damaging his reputation when he was
> alive, Gandhi's sexual behaviour was ignored for a long time after his
> death. It is only now that we can piece together information for a
> rounded picture of Gandhi's excessive self-belief in the power of his
> own sexuality. Tragically for him, he was already being sidelined by
> the politicians at the time of independence. The preservation of his
> vital fluid did not keep India intact, and it was the power-brokers of
> the Congress Party who negotiated the terms of India's freedom.
>
> Gandhi: Naked Ambition is published by Quercus (£20). To order a copy
> for the special price of £18 (free P&P) call Independent Books Direct
> on 08430 600 030, or visit www.independentbooksdirect.co.uk
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